Epic Games hosted a major championship for Fortnite in 2019. The then Twitch stars Jack “CouRage” Dunlop and Ben “DrLupo” Lupo were engaged as casters and hosts. Both turned away from Fortnite in 2020 and explain why they left the game that made them famous.
These were the faces of the Fortnite World Cup: While there are many popular Twitch streamers who rose to fame with Fortnite, virtually all were too inexperienced to qualify for the Fortnite World Cup in 2019. Only 100 solo players and 50 duos managed to succeed in the tough qualifiers and secure a ticket for the World Cup.
Neither Ninja, nor Myth, nor Dakotaz qualified, not even NICKMERCS made it, to say nothing of entertainers like TimTheTatman or Dr Disrespect.
Only Twitch star Turner “Tfue” Tenney was able to qualify for the World Cup, but he did not play a significant role there.
The stars of the World Cup were young, relatively unknown players like Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf, the Fortnite world champion.
To bring some of Twitch’s shine to the World Cup, Epic had hired two established Twitch streamers as casters and hosts: CouRage and DrLupo.
They explained to the viewers what was happening in the game and presented the tournament on stage.
Fortnite: Too hard and too long the same
Here’s why they don’t play Fortnite anymore: In an interview with Matthew “Nadeshoot” Haag, both explain why they currently do not play Fortnite. Both are now involved in Valorant and CoD: Warzone.
Courage says: He would go crazy if he had to play Fortnite the way he used to. He can no longer engage in two-minute build battles against players when there is skill-based matchmaking and nothing comes of it in the end.
Already in March, CouRage had criticized that Fortnite had become too tough for him with the new matchmaking, every game feels like an Olympic competition.
DrLupo says: It’s hard to play the same thing every day forever. Call of Duty at least comes out fresh every year. Also, the audience has become oversaturated with Fortnite. People in the chat suddenly demanded he play Escape from Tarkov.
Both say they still like Fortnite and can imagine playing the game again, but not the way they used to.
Both would like to continue working as casters and hosts for Fortnite. However, Fortnite would first need to communicate what they plan for esports. CouRage criticizes the lack of communication and vision from Epic for Fortnite.
The video shows the scene – Mobile users can skip to 7:30 minutes:
“Epic is destroying Fortnite for content creators”
These are the problems for streamers right now: The well-known Twitch streamer, Ali “SypherPK” Hassan, has explained why Fortnite is currently losing so many popular streamers.
He names 3 reasons:
- The skill-based matchmaking makes every game strenuous and destroys the opportunity to play with other streamers.
- Stream-snipers can now more easily catch the streamer they want to hunt, as the matchmaking creates a smaller pool of players than before.
- Changes to Fortnite resulted in many dying at the start of a match, and after 10 minutes hardly encountering opponents – this is due to the new map with Season 2: “The Agency” being a hotspot, where many land and die at the beginning of a Fortnite match.
All of this has destroyed Fortnite for “content creators”. There are no longer the relaxed rounds with friendly streamers, as they only turn into frustration from being hunted by “intensively gaming stream-snipers”.
Not only Twitch streamers are currently criticizing Fortnite; at Easter, the hashtag #RipFortnite even trended on Twitter for several hours.
